“Abba” is only a little word, and yet contains everything. It is not the mouth but the heart’s affection which speaks like this. Even if I am oppressed with anguish and terror on every side, and seem to be forsaken and utterly cast away from Your presence, yet am I Your child, and You are my Father. For Christ’s sake: I am loved because of the Beloved. So this little word, “Abba,” Father, deeply felt in the heart, surpasses all the eloquence of Demosthenes, Cicero, and the most eloquent speakers that ever lived. This matter is not expressed with words, but with groanings, and these groanings cannot be uttered with any words of eloquence, for no tongue can express them.
Martin Luther

81 OBJECTION OVERRULED

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READING

81 OBJECTION OVERRULED

PRAY Help me to understand the deep truths in this passage of scripture, righteous Lord. —————————————————————- READ Romans 6:1-14. —————————————————————- THINK How would you answer a new Christian who says that it doesn’t matter how he or she behaves? —————————————————————- FOCUS A PLAUSIBLE SUGGESTION (1). ‘All right’, says someone, ‘since God loves to forgive our sins, and Jesus has made it all possible, why not go on indulging in sin? – it will in the end bring even more glory to God.’ A POWERFUL CONTRADICTION (2-4). But what does Paul mean ‘we have died . . . ‘? In what sense does a Christian ‘die’ to sin? We find the answer to our question in the symbol which Paul uses – that of baptism. John the Baptist took men and women into the River Jordan and covered them with water. This was an action- picture of being buried. John was saying that if a person really turned to God he finished with one way of life (pleasing himself) and began another (pleasing God). All this took on new meaning at the cross; Jesus died there, in OUR place, for OUR sin; so if we truly repent and believe in him, God includes us in his death, and deals with us as if we had died for our sins; so we are forgiven forever. ‘Now’, says Paul, ‘since sin caused Jesus to suffer the cross, how can anyone who owes everything to him go on trifling with it?’ A NEW KIND OF LIFE (5-11). The cross of Jesus must not be separated from the empty tomb. The crucifixion and resurrection are the two parts of one great act of deliverance. For we not only need to be freed from the burden of past failure; we need a new kind of life to help us overcome sin in the future. This is what the risen Jesus gives us, by his Spirit. —————————————————————- PRAY Ask God for the experience day-by-day of the victory and freedom of living not ‘under law but under God’s grace’ (14).